2025-06-23 00:14:00
One reason I am on this road trip is to find places that speak to my soul. Blockbuster writer Taylor Sheridan’s mid-life reinvention taught me how much the energy of a place can affect us.
Where does the breath of spirit feel strongest? I’ve found this to be unpredictable. I don’t know until I’m there.
At one point I thought it was about aesthetics. Of course, spirit would be strongest among awe-inspiring natural beauty and in the most glorious places of worship or culture. Now I’m not so sure.
Is this quality inherent in a place (the temple is built where the divine feels strong) or does it arise out of human interaction, does it grow with devotion and diminish in apathy? Can it ever be lost? And what happens when one culture treads over another?
I wrestled with these questions in South Dakota’s Black Hills, where I found spirit strong but challenging. It all started with a moment of righteous indignation.
I am hiking Bear Butte, a small mountain of volcanic rock on the edge of the Black Hills. I was guided here by a local and I am learning about the place as I go.
The Lakota call this place Matȟó Pahá and consider it sacred. I walk among the evidence of their prayer ceremonies: strips of colorful cloth and little pouches of tobacco that adorn the trees. “Please respect these offerings and leave them undisturbed,” asks the State of South Dakota and I decided not to share a picture.
I did not bring an offering. The thought would have never crossed my mind. The mountains I know are not covered in color but garnished with crosses. They don’t seem like places of communion but of achievement. Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” as George Mallory put it before vanishing on Mount Everest.
Halfway up, I hear a lonely voice from the valley below.
Long, stretched-out vowels, a soul reaching for spirit.
The wind picks up.
Then another voice cuts in from the bend ahead of me.
“Yeah, yeah, Devil’s Tower! I’ve done that one, too. Great hike! Yeah! Beautiful views!”
Two groups of hikers must have met. I feel anger boiling up. Their excited chatter seems to spoil a sacred peace.
“Oh yeah, they got the best food, dude! They'll take care of you.”
I feel the urge to take my pocketknife and restore peace through violence. Do these morons not realize this is not an amusement park? Do they not recognize this as a temple of life? No. No, they don’t. They paid for parking, now they get to enjoy the show. And during the break it’s time for soda, pretzels, and a laugh.
I close my eyes. This is just humans being human, wanting to share, to be seen, to connect. I meet them a bit later on the trail. Father and son. A teacher near retirement, a young man about to go to college. I was ready to “teach” them with my dignified silence. Oh, how good it felt to be the righteous one. . . Sorry, I prefer to be quiet in sacred places! But all that goes out the window.
We talk. The dad likes pizza, history, microbreweries. The son is excited to take him to Colorado and “hike a 14er.” I talk about the Black Forest in Germany, the Schwarzwald, named after the dark appearance of its tree trunks just like the Black Hills. They seem like nice people. Just chatty. Well, sometimes so am I.
Then they move on.
The cloths flutter in the wind.
The voice from the valley has long vanished.
The mountain falls silent again.
“This mountain . . . draws people, even those who don’t know much about it. They are often surprised by their strong reaction to it and the emotions it stirs up in them. I tell them, ‘Remember where you’re at–this is one of the best places in the world to come and pray.” — Corey Hairy Shirt of Bear Butte Lodge to spiritual-travel writer Lori Erickson (who unlike me did her homework (and I encouraged her to share her work on Substack :) )
I spent the week on a campground in Sturgis, near the infamous (and illegal) gold rush town of Deadwood. The town’s lifeblood are tourists and the enormous annual Sturgis motorcycle rally (“that week pays the mortgage!”). Main street is lined with bars and stores with biker gear. My cabin is surrounded by enormous RVs, stranded battleships the size of my old Manhattan apartment plus a ‘toy bay’ for motorcycles. By fall, they migrate back to Florida towed by pickup trucks with more horsepower than my European mind can comprehend.
The campground is home to a roaming stoner-prophet. Between beers I hear about whispers and visions, about endless cycles of reincarnation, about the chaos to come.
2025-06-08 23:33:01
By the time you read this I am on my way to Wyoming and South Dakota. I will be answering emails and comments with delays :)
I have only been on the road for a week, but already the trip feels like a teacher. The more present I am, the more hidden treasures I discover.
I am also still stunned by how quickly life can change once we commit.
Until last week, I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s East Village. $2,500 a month about to go to $2,700 — too much for me but still not expensive for New York City.
On Thursday morning I moved my remaining belongings into storage. Later that day, I took a plane to Denver and bought my first car. A Subaru Outback with a casual 100,000 miles on the odometer. (Fingers crossed and a shoutout to Carmax for a great experience so far.) Then I headed for the mountains.
Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: ‘Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.’ ― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
On the Peak to Peak highway, heading from Boulder to Estes Park, I did what a tourist does: pull over to soak in the unexpectedly gorgeous views.
Before I could get the phone out to take a picture, I stopped. I closed my eyes. The air was overwhelming, rich with the scent of pines. Around me nothing but trees and sky. Dead quiet. The ground was covered in pine needles and bits of bark, soft like a blanket. Everything felt warm and inviting. A place to sit and just be.
So, I sat on a tree stump and watched the clouds.
Life in New York had become stimulating but narrow. I was attached to being a ‘writer’ and let my mind fuse with books and screens. Don’t get me wrong, it was important to go deep, both in finance and writing. We have to enter the thicket of nuance to find the patterns that repeat themselves across domains. It takes some work to learn that, in a way, Everything in the world is exactly the same.1
But I was missing the opposing forces creating balance: the open sky, encounters with strangers outside the bubble, unpredictable days . . . wilderness, a dash of chaos.
Frankly, time in the wordless space had made me more sensitive. The city’s energy felt relentless. I felt the density invade my body and build up tension — in the jaw that had to keep quiet (neighbors!), in the chest aching for the deep breath of expanse, in the legs that yearned to walk, walk, walk.
I struggled to stay centered while immersed in the pulsating current of ambition and ecstasy. It was time to take the next step on the soul path and jump into the unknown.
This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. ― Alan Watts
I am learning, again and again, to slow down, to listen.
I am re-discovering how to have meaningful conversations with strangers.
Perhaps it’s the nature of a solitary road trip. I spend time hiking and driving in silence. My social battery is full when I encounter shopkeepers, waiters, landlords, the people who tend to blur into the background if one is preoccupied with the group. I have time. I’m curious. Maybe I am even eager to break the silence with conversation, though I would never admit that!
I find that patient and undivided attention acts like a magnet for stories. Enter someone’s room, literal or metaphorical, with curiosity and warmth and you get the chance to catch glimpses of a stranger’s soul. Having an extra five or ten minutes can turn a transactional conversation into a meaningful encounter.
This can pay surprising dividends. It’s like the world bends in your favor in barely perceptible ways.
2025-05-29 06:58:37
It’s my last day in New York and I’m saying goodbye to a tree.
It’s an American Elm, Ulmus americana, in the park around the corner. I did not know this. I had to look it up. I judged myself a little. I should be more curious! But the truth is that I don’t really care about its name. I just like to hang out with it. I know what it feels like to be near it.
I greet it every morning by pressing my palms against the rough bark.
I rest against my head and back against it.
Things slow down.
I watch the light break through the leaves. For a moment, everything seems to stop. Then the branches move in unison. A silent, secret greeting.
Hello there.
The tree is next to a popular dog run and I am the weirdo leaning against it. But I don’t care what it looks like. I’m just interested in the secrets of the trees.
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. . . . Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
. . . A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.” — Hermann Hesse
A couple of years ago, I went on a road trip upstate with a girl. When we arrived, she walked up to a tree and hugged it. It was a long, heartfelt hug. A hug that left her smiling. I didn’t show it, but I cringed.
What? We’re literally the ‘tree huggers’ now? Give me a break.
Secretly, I was already making friends with the trees. I had spent a week in an outrageously gorgeous valley in the Dolomite Mountains. There, I found a portal, a moment with nature that changed everything. It appeared as one living and breathing web. As a teacher, too. And I was a part of it.
Initially, I resisted. I felt silly, childish. Then, slowly, I embraced this new way of being. I simply could not resist. On every morning walk, I reached out and let my fingertips run across bark. I got to know all the trees in my neighborhood by touch and texture.
I used to give heady advice. Read this and listen to that. Now my advice sounds trivial.
Before doing anything, do what looks a lot like doing nothing.
Sit outside and listen. Meditate. Pray, if you’re the praying kind (I am now). Slowly let the channel open.
Rest against a tree or simply sit near one. Try to make friends with it. Why not send it some gratitude . . . or some love? What if it could hear your thoughts? Maybe it knows things? Maybe it has advice? The trees and rocks, the land on which we walk and dream, they’ve seen it all.
The forces that we can perceive in this richer reality are fundamentally subtle. My life’s work is to help more people understand that these emotional, energetic, non-logical, non-linear and non-verbal signals often come with a high degree of intelligence. — Tom Morgan
an·thro·po·mor·phism [/ˌanTHrəpəˈmôrˌfizəm/], noun, the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.
There it is. The harsh voice of judgment. Silly boy. Talking to trees. Grow up.
But I no longer care. Between the inner critic and the trees, I know who looks out for me. I know who can teach me how to be.
The tree is deeply rooted. Its branches reach out to receive the light. The trunk connects heaven and earth. That’s how the tree greets the day, the sun, and the wind.
It lives by the rhythm of the seasons. Each spring it sprouts, yet it also lets itself be shaped. It accepts what happens to it and what is in the way — the rocks and the pavement, the droughts, the hail, the gardeners’ saws.
The tree shares: oxygen and perhaps fruit. It offers shelter. It is there to lean against.
When I feel lost, I recall that image, that tree-being: grounded, rooted, and connected. Reaching out, upward. Breathing, receiving light. Listening to the wind, pondering the stars. Sharing what can only be created here, now, by this being, in this way.
That’s how I want to stand: like a channel for life.
Life feels like a paradox: I yearn to stand like a tree, but it is my destiny to walk.
Today is my last day in New York and I will miss my tree,
But not really.
For I know I will find it,
Everywhere and in all trees,
All different,
All perfect.
— Frederik
2025-05-26 02:04:43
A few short years ago, the things that bring me closer to my soul meant nothing to me.
I didn’t dance or sing. I spent little time outside and meditated only sporadically. I didn’t understand the power of silence and sound (I still don’t, not really).
I let my mind be cluttered.
I was always busy. Busy felt good. Rest smelled like laziness. When I made time for my body, it had to be efficient. I needed music or podcasts to keep myself occupied.
Walking and writing were the only things I stuck by pure instinct. Those got me through the COVID years.
I was not curious about my soul.
I made no space for it.
When I gained a glimpse of its strange realms, I got scared. What I saw had nothing to do with the life I was living. Nothing at all. Ze-Ro.
I had to slow down a lot to realize that I was running on autopilot.
I needed distance, space beyond words, to notice that I did not choose when and how much to participate in the infinite ‘happening’. I just woke up and let myself be flooded.
Things are different now.
I used to rely on goals and plans. Now I try to balance thinking and listening. I ground myself in the moment. I notice questions bubble up, float like soft foam on the waves of my consciousness.
Why am I here?
What am I here to do?
What is there to create and to share?
How can I contribute to what is to be done?
I wait.
I wait for the touch of the wind, for a bird to sing, for a whisper. I wait for an answer to form and roll in from the deep.
If nothing happens, I let the mind get to work. I trust that more guidance will be revealed after taking another step.
Then I move.
Soul allows you to become attached to the world, which is kind of love. When the soul stirs, you feel things, both love and anger, and you have strong desires and even fears. You live life fully, instead of skirting it with intellectualism or excessive moralistic worries. — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
Sometimes my writing journey feels like a series of useful dead-ends. It led me to creativity and art, to spirit and the voice, to the intimate spaces of the soul. Along the way, I tried one label after another. I always reached the same conclusion: not that.
Finance substack. Not that.
Money and meaning. Not that.
Mind-body journaling. Not that.
Help others write. Not that.
I think of writing now as just one aspect of our voice, our sacred and most intimate vibration. A gateway to the space of the soul. Now that is interesting to me.
Why are you here?
What do you care about?
Who are you behind the mask?
Why do you hold yourself back?
What is stuck that wants to move?
What answers do you carry deep inside?
What obvious next step are you avoiding?
What is waiting at the center of your labyrinth?
What golden vision of your life do you not dare look at?
Those are the questions that interest me.
They are fascinating, strange, and challenging.
If they are not, you haven’t scratched the surface. You are walking circles around your maze.
I’ve found these questions to exist in a space of paradox: we carry the answers within. We just don’t have access to the room. We grope in the dark in a jumble of keys. We look for signs in the flickering light of a lonely torch. Answers are revealed one step and one lesson at a time.
Maybe these are the only questions that I can help explore.
Not because I have answers, but because I’ve been there. Because it is the one area in which my mirror feels a tiny bit polished.
2025-05-19 00:44:23
Words used to be my prism and my prison.
I was obsessed with capturing everything. Every experience had to be translated into language.
My old notebooks show how stuck I was, frozen between hope and despair. Pages covered with paper-thin plans and weightless affirmations. I found a thousand ways to ask why am I here, what do I want, and why does this feel so impossible?
I looked for answers in books and podcasts. Always . . . more words.
Writing was my way of moving through life, pen on the page, one page at a time.
It was useful. It was movement.
I can see how the strands of struggle began to weave together, how they formed a checkered shape, a quilt of becoming.
But writing was not enough.
The answers I was looking for were behind doors I could not see.
. . . words that point to the Tao
seem monotonous and without flavor.
When you look for it, there is nothing to see.
When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear.
When you use it, it is inexhaustible.
The things I love look pretty boring.
Close your eyes, repeat a mantra.
Walk in silence.
Sit with a tree.
Lie down and listen to a magician playing an instrument.
Dance your way through a wave of emotions.
Tune into your voice to the sound of a drone.
The things I love point in the same direction: toward the maze, the center, where all things are born.
They direct me away from reading, toward doing.
And they opened doors to the wordless space of the soul.
There, in the formless dark, my mind again forms the big questions.
Why am I here?
What is my lesson to learn?
What is the next step on my journey?
What gifts am I not sharing? Why?
Where am I blocked? How do I hold myself back?
What vision is so bright, I don’t dare look at it?
What is possible in this life?
I don’t reach for the pen. I try to remain with inner stillness. If I am in motion, I ask to let myself be moved. I ground myself in the present, in the weight of the body, in the sounds around me. I wait. I listen.
I look for answers in shapes and sounds, in metaphors and sensations.
What would that sound like?
What would that look like?
What would that feel like?
It feels like an ancient process, like I am discovering a lost birthright.
The word psychotherapy consists of two Greek words: psyche (soul) and therapy (care). By definition, psychotherapy is care of the soul. When you serve your soul, you are being therapeutic in this deep, Platonic sense. — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
My days have taken on a new rhythm. Slower, quieter. Intense movement embedded in stillness.
It’s not all fun and games and bliss. Far from it. In fact, I am exhausted. My bedroom is filled with boxes and my mind occupied with storage facilities and used cars. I sleep on a simple tri-fold mat, the mattress about to go to the curb.
My experience of time has changed dramatically. Days used to fly by, the hours blurring together. Now they stretch out like songs, an ebb and flow of melodies.
Everything feels both more alive and more . . . mundane.
But boring, I’ve noticed, is fine.
It’s like turning the phone to grayscale. I’ve done it. It works. It works because the phone gets very, very dull. Turn the colors back on and it’s like stepping into Candyland on acid. Way too intense.
Once the artificial stimulus is gone, the ordinary becomes vibrant.
I would love to say that the wordless space has been the best thing to ever happen to me and my writing. But it’s not that simple. There is a price to be paid.
I’m not talking about money. Generally, I’ve found the spaces of caring for the soul not that expensive (though they are often taught in expensive locations, a kind of spiritual White Lotus). No, they asked for a different kind of investment, one I was reluctant to make.
The things I love tend to be embodied and intimate.
They require time, time to explore, discover, and practice.
They ask for undivided attention, for openness, and for active participation.
Am I fully present? Can I face my truth, what is underneath the mask? Can I stay with discomfort? Am I willing to be witnessed?
This feels incompatible with a busy, plugged-in life. Why learn how to swirl like a Sufi when you could be on the couch and catch up on The Last of Us?
And my writing has changed, slowed down.
I used to pick up the scent of a story and follow the trail down a rabbit hole. I could not wait to piece the puzzle together. That’s a valuable skill for an analyst or journalist. It made writing financially rewarding.
Now, deep dive research can feel like an interruption. I read a few pages before bed, a substack post here and there. When people ask for recommendations, I notice how out of the loop I am. I’m the last one to get the news, the one at risk of panicking at the bottom, right before the market turns.
Surrender to the path and maybe the only thing left to write about is that.
It’s not that I’ve turned anti-writing or anti-books. I still love gripping stories and magnificent prose. I know the power of words, see how they ripple through time and shape our world. But I am skeptical that they hold the answers.
I am skeptical that what waits at the center can be put into words.
“Words, symbols, signs, and thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality,” as Ken Wilber put it. “The word ‘water’ won’t satisfy your thirst.” And I thirst.
What do you do with that thirst when “work” — money, economic activity — has moved behind a wall of screens? I don’t know. Not yet.
But I am learning that the world beyond the map is filled with hidden wells. The water of life is everywhere, like a subtle current within and behind all things.
But the stream runs in secret. It resists being squeezed into words and nailed to the page.
It feels like watching cherry blossoms. An extravagant, abundant explosion of life right now.
Faded by tomorrow.
Wholeness, I think,
Draws its life somewhere where the breathing
Stops,Somewhere where the mind cradles light,
Where the only senses that remainBlush and stumble
If they try to speak with our language so new
It is still trying to
Invent,Still shaping
Its first intelligible sound,
Still sculpting its first true image of
God.— Hafiz
The wordless space feels like the ocean.
One moment calm and gentle, then forceful and wild. Always evocative and mysterious. Always beautiful. Far deeper and stranger than I could have imagined.
I step into the rhythm running through trees and concrete alike.
Afterwards, I watch orange candlelight flicker across the walls of my emptying apartment. The city has sunk into a deep quiet, as if a vast forest was shielding me. Behind closed eyelids I carry fading images and echoes of destiny.
A song rises in flow, fades through the open window.
What appears in motion cannot be held.
Words appear. I know my attempts to translate are hopeless. And yet I write.
I write not because I have answers but in the hope that words are like pebbles, stepping stones for the next person crossing the stream. Stones hinting at what is possible, guiding to the door, to the wordless space.
There, on the threshold of change, we face questions nobody can answer for us.
Do we want to step into the unknown?
Are we going to follow what feels true but cannot be put into words?
Follow the path, climb the stairs, enter the tunnel, plunge into the depths . . . or remain standing, observing, contemplating, analyzing. Be entertained, then move on to another door, another spectacle, another cloud of words.
Walk or watch?
For better or worse, I’ve made my choice. I paid the price. There is no turning back.
I don’t understand what is happening or why. Perhaps it is not meant to be understood. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore. I know something is happening. I try to move with it, swirl at the center of the vortex. That’s plenty already.
The things I love are simple but vast. They have more depth than I could explore in a lifetime.
Walk. Rest against a tree. Close your eyes. Listen. Feel the rhythm. Let yourself be moved.
Move, beloved, move. Trust your feet. They know the next step.
Enter the dance without end.
This is your birthright.
— Frederik
2025-04-29 03:11:37
These are going this week as part of my preparation to move out.
Available for pick-up at 14th St and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan: tomorrow (Tuesday) through Thursday between 3 and 6pm.
IF you are interested: reply to this email or email me directly and let me know what day you would want to stop by. I can send you a picture of the books left that day. Everything is first come first serve.
Max. 4 books per person. You can take more than two if you commit to pass along at least two to someone else within three months. No hoarding :)
I am also selling one extremely rare copy of hedge fund manager Crispin Odey’s investment commentary compilation (“A Short Book And A Long Memory: Investment Commentary 1992-2002”). This is not for sale anywhere that I know of (my guess is that he bought up the remaining copies to take it out of circulation). $80 for in-person pick-up, or $100 + shipping.
That’s it. Have a wonderful week!
Frederik
